bkenobi

Ok, cool. Then I'll give that a try. Btw, if I use MAME to do this, is there a delay for exitting? I assume not since it's basically the same thing as hitting escape like normal except with more buttons. My only concern is that if I happen to hit all 4 at once, then I exit. Fortunately, that's pretty much impossible to do with my configuration (unless a button sticks )

I've seen people put all roms in one directory and put all emus in another (within subdirectories obviously) and others put roms in each emulators directory. There are advantages for each method, but it ends up a personal preference. I personally have tried both and currently keep my roms in a single directory split out into each system (MAME roms stay in the MAME directory though) because it's easier to maintain sets with a single rom directory.

Stu - I didn't know XPadder could do a combo like that. I looked but didn't see anything. I'll give it a try this evening. Does this allow for more than 2 buttons? I want to use 4, but I suppose 2 could work as well if I just change my concept a bit... Brian - I hadn't considered doing that because I didn't know how many keys could be pressed simultaneously. I want to hit 4 buttons/keys at once and I thought the limit was 2 at a time. I'll also try this and use whichever gives better performance. Thanks guys!

Just a quick note. If you have EnableDirectInput turned on (apparently for SlikStik users) then this won't function. Turn it off and everything will work fine.

I was just looking at this again and I see that the default for all games is buttons 4, 5, and 6 + left-up. I need to customize this to suit my cabinet, which doesn't have buttons 5 or 6 or a joystick. I know how to do that for emulators, but how does that get modified for MAME? Can I just create a file and call it MAME? I didn't see it in the Advanced Configuration Wizard, so I'm at a loss. The only alternative I can see at the moment is writing an AHK script (like HK suggested), but I would have to make one for each emulator that had a different exit key (or use alt-f4 I suppose). Or perhaps just use a little more complicated logic I guess and check to see which emulator is running. Maybe I just need one when I launch MAME...

I didn't know about that button.

I noticed that too... Does that mean that 680 people think that GameEx is perfect in every way and needs no additional features? It's good, but can ALWAYS be improved!

You know you want 'em!

Yup, that was the problem. I tried a bunch of things, but GameEx continued to ignore the input. This was the same problem I was having when I tried to setup multiple inputs for P1 & P2 before. Anyway, I've updated my script to include those statements and it works great. If anyone else wasnts to use a mouse/spinner/trackball/steering wheel in GameEx, this code should work. All you have to do is edit the DeadZone, SpeedTrigger, and CursorWatchSpeed values to suit. Oh, I also added a reference to nomousy.exe to hide the mouse cursor which was mentioned in this thread. That isn't really necessary when the mouse is disabled in GameEx, though, so it's commented out. CoordMode, Mouse, Screen SetKeyDelay, -1 SysGet, ScreenWidth, 78 SysGet, ScreenHeight, 79 x_center:=250 ;Starting x position y_center:=250 ;Starting y position SpeedThreshold:=100 ;Threshold speed where slow and fast scrolling is determined DeadZone:=15 ;Minimum movement deadzone CursorWatchSpeed:=25;How much delay between cursor position checks #Persistent SetTimer, WatchCursor, %CursorWatchSpeed% return WatchCursor: IfWinActive GameEx { ;run nomousy.exe /hide;Hide mouse cursor if visible MouseGetPos, xpos, ypos DeltaX:=x_center-xpos DeltaY:=y_center-ypos ;Only allow the most active axis to control GameEx menu if abs(DeltaX)>abs(DeltaY) { DominantAxis:=X Delta:=DeltaX } else { DominantAxis:=Y Delta:=DeltaY } if (abs(Delta) < DeadZone) { ;No Movement } else if (abs(Delta) < SpeedThreshold) { ;Normal Movement if (Delta<0) { if DominantAxis = X { Send {Blind}{Up DownTemp} Send {Blind}{Up Up} } else { Send {Blind}{Down DownTemp} Send {Blind}{Down Up} } } else { if DominantAxis = X { Send {Blind}{Down DownTemp} Send {Blind}{Down Up} } else { Send {Blind}{Up DownTemp} Send {Blind}{Up Up} } } } else { ;Fast Movement if (Delta<0) { if DominantAxis = X { Send {Blind}{PgUp DownTemp} Send {Blind}{PgUp Up} } else { Send {Blind}{PgDn DownTemp} Send {Blind}{PgDn Up} } } else { if DominantAxis = X { Send {Blind}{PgDn DownTemp} Send {Blind}{PgDn Up} } else { Send {Blind}{PgUp DownTemp} Send {Blind}{PgUp Up} } } } ;Reinitialize mouse position for next step DllCall("SetCursorPos", int, x_center, int, y_center) } ;IfWinNotActive, GameEx ;{ ; run nomousy.exe ;} return ;Esc:: ;{ ; run nomousy.exe ; sleep (1000) ; ExitApp }

Isn't there an answer to this in the FAQ? I'm just wondering because this is the 3rd or 4th thread in the last week or two that has asked exactly the same question. Either that, or perhaps a sticky should be made that answers this question once and for all. That way, the forum can be more helpful and kept cleaner. Just a thought.

I have to disagree that other front ends are easier to setup. I've been looking around again over the last few weeks due to problems on my new machine (that I think got solved today ). I figured there might have been an advance in FE's in the last year, but I really did not see that. There are two others that claim easy setup (Maximus Arcade and ... sorry I forget the name, but it has modules for each emulator), but one is NOT free, and the other is not exactly as easy as it claims. Anyway, long and the short of it is that GameEx is not perfect, but with the people around here on the forum, most problems can be solved quickly. Just give us a chance to help! Btw, I decided to go with GameEx on both machines

Wow, can you feel the love

What version of MAME32 were you using?

You try to help and that's the response you get? WOW!

Sometimes it's hard to know what to search for when all you have is a concept but not the correct nomenclature

Wow, thanks Stu! I'll have a look this evening. My script actually looks a lot like this but I added a couple features like mouse acceleration and a deadzone. I also wanted both left/right and up/down to control things the same, so I set the larger movement to control the position. Unfortunately, mine didn't work so I'll definetly use this one (I may modify yours or add the stuff that makes yours work into mine and upload the results if you don't mind).

This is really cool! Hey Stu, got a question. Do you know how to send keystrokes to GameEx using AHK? I'm still farting around with that mouse2key thing for using the mouse in list scrolling. The only problem is that GameEx doesn't seem to accept keystrokes when I send them. Any ideas? EDIT: Sorry, didn't see the other thread before I read this one. I think I'll try to combine this one too to get everything going at once. Sometimes the mouse will pop up even if it's disabled in GameEx, so this will take care of that!

This sounds like a cool idea. Perhaps you could add it to the "Feature Request" thread so Tom can think about it.

It looks like this one got missed from the summary out of my earlier request: Scroll through lists with a mouse/spinner/trackball (basically, moving the mouse would move the selection in the list rather than moving a cursor)

Turns out that the script doesn't work. the mouse was actually hovering over the menu item so it appeared to work, but it wasn't. I have not found any way to get this to work yet. I suggest adding this request to the "most wanted features" thread so it might get some attention!

Just an update, I have things working in MAME at this point, but since GameEx doesn't take input from the mouse as movement in the list (only actual mouse movement), I still can't select anything. I really want to use GameEx in this cab for both consistency and ease of setup, but if I can't get this working, I'll probably have to go with MAMEwah or something. This cabinet doesn't have to be fancy like my main one, but it's a pain to learn how to setup MAMEwah. I have tried about everything I can think of to get GameEx to ignore the mouse and accept key presses from AHK and have come up empty. Anyone who has gotten AHK scripts to send keys to GameEx have any advice? PLEASE?

Just curious if there are any plans on incorporating this version in with the next build of GameEx? I would imagine that this version would load a bit quicker since there isn't a loader/wrapper required anymore (although I must admit I never noticed a real delay anyway). Btw, is Nebula any faster than MAME at this point? I see that KOF2002 is listed in it, so I imagine that all KOF and Metal Slug games should play faster?

Well, it is possible to have multiple versions of MAME as I said before, but I've never done it. You shouldn't have to have a batch file for each rom, that would be really silly. You should just be able to create separate rom dirs for each version of MAME and point the "emulator dir" to that one. Another option is if you have to reboot to change control panels, you could have different .ini files for gameex that point to different paths for MAME. I don't know how that would work with listing games (it may have to rebuild the list each time, which would make this option close to unusable). Another option you could consider is setting up MAME so that there are multiple inputs for each control. I do this with my cabinet actually so that I can have my gun 1 trigger button and P1B1 both mapped to button 1 in MAME. That way I don't have to worry about setting up each gun game, it just works right out of the box. As for MAME32, I know that a lot of people are using this instead of the command line version for their primary MAME executable. I haven't done this, but it's supposed to work just fine. My guess is that you just have to get the correct command line options in there and it will launch the rom correctly. In fact, it's possible these are the same command line parameters for both MAME and MAME32 since they are based on the same code. Sorry don't know what VP is and I don't use Daphne at the moment.

custom control panel viewer (implement the control panel that's in the theme editor!) in game volume control would be really nice! an option to scroll through lists with a mouse/spinner/trackball (basically, moving the mouse would move the selection in the list rather than moving a cursor) multiple buttons to do the same action (a single gamepad controller could be used in a 2 player cab MUCH more easily)

1) You need plain jane mame because it's used to generate the list of roms and such that work. I don't think this is included in adv mame. As far as getting it working, there is a walk-through on the main page that is really detailed (Link search for "Advanced MAME"). 2) You can definitely set up other versions of MAME as emulators. Go to the same link above to see how to configure emulators. Also, if you search in the forum, there are multiple topics that talk about setting up dedicated Neo Geo, etc emulators in just this way. In general, though, plane jane MAME does a really good job with most games and gets the most updates, so it's probably best to just stick with that... 4) The only reason a rom doesn't get listed is if you have it filtered out or if your version of MAME doesn't recognize it. Check the above link and search for "filter"). The typical situation is that you have 6000 roms, but only 2000 show up. That's because you have it set to hide clones. Good luck